Also, the swimming coach is getting shafted.

“And I’ll probably choose to do something else for a living if we ever had to go that route because it’s so complex,” Barta says. “Do you pay the Division III football player as an employee? Do you pay the tennis student athlete as an employee?”

According to a database maintained by The Tennessean, in 2010-11, Gary Barta earned $456,992 ($3,000 in non-university compensation), and had the opportunity to earn another $140,000 in bonuses.

So here is a man who earns over $400,000 per year, possibly over $500,000 with bonuses, and his job is to run the athletic department at the University of Iowa.

First of all, bullSHIT you’d choose to do something else for a living. You can’t tell me there aren’t compensations (likely none of them older than 25) for being athletic director that have nothing to do with salary. If you’re not milking that shit to the tune of nonstop cheerleaders and blow, you’re doing it wrong, so don’t come to us all, “Oh, my job is so difficult I might go make half a million somewhere else despite having no skills beyond jerking off alumni behind the practice shed.”

Second, it’s not actually that hard. Yes, insurance and pensions and other things, as pointed out in the comments, come into play when your’e dealing with a state system, but there are all kinds of ways around that, including independent contracting setups, limited-term employment status, making some kind of massive cash outlay part of a “scholarship,” etc. And anyway, it’s not up to the individual schools, it’s the NCAA that has to get its head out of its ass on this.

Which is not helped along one iota by dicks like this acting like the reason it can’t be solved is that somebody is unable to make a spreadsheet that’s good enough.

A.